Sunday, May 30, 2010

Stumblin' in the darkness

Sometimes the only thing you can do is leave everything behind and hit the road. The boy made his way through the darkness, reluctantly lighting his way with a torch for fear he might come off the road. It was a long and empty stretch that cut through the hill like the wind cut through the boy's thin shirt. The moon was nothing but a whispered promise in a cloud too far away to make out any shape.

As he walked he felt a vehicle coming up from behind. He couldn't hear it, because he had music playing in his ears, and he couldn't see it, because the lights were obfuscated by the hillside. But he felt it, and moved to the side of the road. Ten minutes later it came up, a red four wheel drive towing a trailer. The boy  felt it slow down, nearly to a walking pace. Much slower than caution passing a pedestrian would dictate. The boy stared at the ground, continued to walk and adopted the face he had perfected when he used to wander around the city late at night. The don't fuck with me face. Whether it was the look or the stride, the four wheel drive picked up its speed and disappeared around a bend. By the time the boy reached the top of the hill, it was nowhere in sight.

A little bit further down on his return journey, the boy stopped and lay down on the road. He felt the cold fingers of the tarmac slide through his shirt, arguing with the sharp stones as to who had strongest claim on his soft flesh. While they debated the boy stared up at the stars.

Sometimes the night sky looked just like a ceiling with lots of fake glow-in-the-dark stickers patched up carelessly. When he craned his neck back the ceiling stretched on, and he could fancy that it was slowly descending upon him, a black sky trying to meet the black road, with him caught in the middle. Sometimes it looked so big that he felt it existed solely for himself. Something so big couldn't have any other purpose than to serve the person looking through it.

The boy glanced sideways and saw the moon, now bloated and yellow, not so much floating up into the sky as being reluctantly pulled. Its colour made him think of the sun, and he thought of the moon as simply the sun sliding back from its track, slipping down an unseen slope to another life. If that happened, the boy thought, would we all develop night vision, or would we just create more lights?

After maybe an hour the cold part of the road finished its argument with the sharp part. The boy rose, teeth chattering, and was unsure as to whether he was the shivering figure standing upright or the black shadow stretched out down the hill. There's something about a shadow cast by the moon that is infinitely more life-like than one cast by the sun. As the boy walked he tried to tell the difference, but had little luck. This time he left the torch off and both he and his shadow, whichever was which, slowly made their way back down the hill as the moon watched on, thinking its own thoughts.

Friday, May 28, 2010

Things that have happened over the past few weeks

1. I watched a foal get shot in the head after breaking his leg.
2. I went to the Sydney Writers' Festival, found a little inspiration to write, then came home to utter bedlam and have barely even read anything, let alone started writing.
3. I've been missing Angie who is over in Perth for four months.
4. I've been incredibly tempted to tweet horrible things about guests and staff on our official resort twitter site and somehow, thankfully, resisted.
5. I rode my bike approximately 60km in one day and found out the hard way I'm not as fit as I thought I was.
6. I just remembered now I need to put the chickens to bed. Not a huge thing that's happened, but very current.
7. I finally received a book of short stories that I was published in. When I say book, it's more like a zine. But the publishers call it a book, so who am I to argue?

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Still getting wet

I should try to write in here more often.

I just read back through the last post and am happy to report that I've tossed the food books in the recycling. Well, not entirely, but after reading through a few different books at once and finding that not only did they contradict each other but contradicted themselves, sometimes within a couple of pages, I decided that I was probably the best authority on what food I should put into my body. I came to the conclusion that if I like it and I don't eat my own weight in it each day (like I used to down chocolate), then I'm probably going to keep waking up in the morning.

So far I feel exactly the same as I did when I was spending an extra two hours a day trying to prepare something that was supposedly ideal for my blood, body, brain, personality, sense of humour type. I still have enough energy to spend 12 hours a day working in the office (hmm, that I need to work on) and I'm sleeping just fine (no long term effects from my polyphasic experiment so far.)

My only relatively new personal development news is that in September I'm going to embark on a month long yoga teacher training. I worked out that the three yoga teachers here are more often than not unable to take the classes we advertise as being available every day, so I thought I might be able to take at least beginner classes. It's also going to be a nice education for me, and it's happening less than a minute's walk from my door, so how could I refuse? Living with the teacher has its advantages, so I'm already reading one of the highly recommended books for the course, The Heart Of Yoga by T.K.V. Desikachar. I'm enjoying it a lot, it seems to make a lot of sense. There's a lot of talk in there about not just Äsanas but working on the mind and perspective.


I got to thinking about this, and noticed how so many people I seem to come into contact with now are so focussed on becoming an alpha human, a creature who can drop all earthly vices and negativity and abide as the most calm, spiritual and positive being imaginable. And yet, they have just as many or more issues than the drunken moron I used to sell merch to, who thought dribbling his warm beer over himself was about as spiritual as life got. Somehow, all this inner work is just not translating from the serene reading in bed at night to the hard reality of actually living life. To my mind it's like we're all spending a lot of time drying ourselves furiously with a large, fluffy towel in the comforts of our house before walking out in the rain thinking we're going to stay dry. The best we can hope for is that we remember to keep hold of that towel so at least we have a piece of damp material to hold over our heads when the downpour begins.


It's not an analogy that I think serves as an excuse to forget it all and start shooting smack, but it's an interesting thing that I try to keep in mind when I find myself swearing at the computer or losing my temper with someone who works with me. As Desikachar observes in his book, personal development is not something designed for our age of haste, it's something that will take a lifetime. Not even can, but will. Anyone who thinks otherwise, as far as I can gather, is probably only setting themselves back further.